Sharra didn't like the looks she was receiving from the young - younger than Kruger by far at any rate - male orderly as Delacourt escorted her into a medical exam room. She'd informed Sharra - in that cold montone voice of hers - that she had to be absolutely certain that Sharra was clean and hadn't been abused by any of her captors. It was laughable, really, the way she'd made it sound as though she genuinely cared for Sharra's well-being. Sharra knew better. A gynecological exam was completely unnecessary; Delacourt damn well knew it. She just wanted to subject Sharra to the utter misery and humiliation of this personal procedure for her own silent amusement and desire to embarrass her prisoner.
"Strip, put the white gown on, and then hop up onto the table," Delacourt ordered her, the tone of her voice brooking no argument. Sharra was grateful that at least Delacourt pushed the leering orderly out of the room before she made her strip down.
Once dressed in the standard hospital gown, Sharra glared spitefully at Delacourt as the older woman stepped back to allow the doctor - a woman, thank God - to examine her inside and out. She remained still throughout the examination, flinching only once when the doctor roughly removed the apparatus from her body.
"Your men haven't sexually abused her," the doctor informed Delacourt in a heavy Italian accent. "In fact, no man has ever breached this woman's walls."
Sharra glared at the doctor for revealing that bit of information.
"A virgin?" That was definitely a surprise to Delacourt. "Those are rare to see these days indeed." She stepped forward to stick her face right into Sharra's. "Is there something wrong with you that the men don't like you?" Her eyes trailed down Sharra's face and she stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest as if to shield herself. "Or are you one of those women who prefer the softer of the human species?"
Sharra nearly choked on her saliva at the question. Delacourt was seriously asking her if she was a fucking lesbian?
She growled into Delacourt's face. "If I was, you wouldn't have anything to worry about. I would never be interested in an ugly, washed-up hag like you!"
Delacourt drew back her hand and slapped Sharra harshly across the face. Sharra's head swung to the side, the sound of flesh against flesh still echoing in the room, but she didn't show any reaction to the strike at all. She would never give the bitch that satisfaction.
"Get dressed," Delacourt ordered as she moved for the door. "Make it quick."
Jumping to her feet, Sharra shed the hospital gown, shimmied quickly back into her own clothes, and then walked out of the room. She found that Delacourt wasn't waiting to escort her back to her cell. Instead, the orderly who'd been casting her lecherous gazes stood in front of her, eyes glinting in a way she didn't at all trust.
Grabbing her by the elbow, the orderly led her out of the small clinic. His shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor, irrritating her beyond rationality. She jerked her arm from his grasp and pointedly crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to make conversation despite his attempts to engage her.
They finally reached her room after five minutes. Five long, never-ending minutes. When she walked into the room, she was taken aback to see Delacourt sitting on her bed, flipping through Kruger's journal that Sharra had absentmindedly left lying on top of the bed in plain view.
Delacourt looked up as Sharra entered the room, the orderly vanishing from the room unnoticed. "Growing fond of your captor, are you?" she asked, holding up the journal.
"Of course not," Sharra replied haughtily, crossing the small room to put as much distance as possible between them in the confined space. "Just needed something to read."
Delacourt threw her head back and laughed, the sound high-pitched and grating. "I do believe you've succumbed to a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome. And with the most vicious killer and serial rapist in the current existence of mankind! You must have completely lost your mind."
Sharra scowled, but begrudgingly admitted silently to herself that there was some truth to Delacourt's observation.
"You don't know him at all." Delacourt stood to her feet and moved forward, coming to a stop in the middle of the room. "You're pathetic."
"As is everyone who lives on Earth in your opinion. You know, your family once resided on the planet too. You are descended from Earthlings, after all. They must have been really pathetic themselves."
Delacourt shook her head with a low chuckle. "I've given you too much leeway here. I can see that now. That's a problem that will soon be rectified in the next hour. I promise you that."
Sharra shuddered at the threat in Delacourt's voice as the woman walked away, glancing back only once as she exited the cell.
Jerking out of a relatively sound slumber, Sharra's heart was pounding as she looked about her darkened room in trepidation, listening for that sound that had awakened her.
There it was again. A soft scraping noise along the bottom of the far left wall. It sounded too big to be a mouse, but it couldn't possibly be a person. Unless, of course, they had curled themselves up tightly into a ball to squeeze into the air ducts that ventilated AC into every room in this 'prison.' But why would anyone be crawling through the air ducts in the middle of the night?
Suddenly Sharra was reminded vividly of the night a man had broken into Kruger's bedroom, how easily he could have murdered her in her sleep had Kruger not been there. The fear she'd only briefly felt that night was back in spades tonight, but there was no strong, dangerous mercenary to protect her this time.
Sharra jumped at the loud banging that echoed through the room when the vent into her own room was kicked in. The noise was followed quickly by the sound of heavy male grunting as a body hit the floor without any grace whatsoever. A colorful curse rent the air as the tall, imposing shadow of a man stood to his full height of 6'3.
Refusing to cower like a coward, Sharra straightened her spine resolutely. She reached out blindly in the dark in search of a weapon. Her hand wrapped around a lamp light next to the bed and she clutched it tightly as the man started to approach the bed where she lay.
Just seconds before he reached her - before she could discern his facial features - a loud mechanical voice announced, 'END OF SIMULATION,' and dozens of bright lights flashed on. Sharra blinked rapidly against the sudden onslaught, flinching when she was yanked roughly to her feet by the roots of her hair.
"What the fuck?!" she screamed, eyes darting around wildly until they locked with Delacourt's. Next to her stood the tall male orderly who couldn't stop ogling her even now.
"I'm not much for senselessly beating a person," Delacourt explained, manicured nails tapping against her thigh.
"Yet you have no qualms about ruthlessly having them killed," Sharra cut in.
"None at all."
"So...what? You put me through this horrifying simulation just to fuck with my head?"
"You're very astute. I must admit I find that admirable in a person."
Sharra sneered. "I was hoping to gain your admiration."
Choosing to ignore the snide comment, Delacourt went on. "Until Agent Kruger returns from his mission, we are stuck with each other, I'm afraid. And I have the say in what is to be done with you. Playing with your mind is simply one way in which to torment you without leaving a mark and it is just the beginning. Believe me when I say that I have much worse in mind in terms of hurting you."
Kruger was jostled haphazardly against the inner wall of the Raven as Crowe finally landed the bird on the main landing pad of CCB's Italian headquarters. He grumbled at Crowe in their native language about 'fucking warning him next time' and then hobbled over to the rear of the ship to await the lowering of the ramp. Once it was down, he strode purposefully towards the entrance in the ground, not bothering to wait for his boets before leaping down into it. He was much too eager - much, much too eager - to see Sharra again.
By the time Drake and Crowe caught up with him, he was already more than halfway to Delacourt's lavish office. The halls echoed with the heaviness of his combat boots hitting the metallic floor. The walls of the extremely narrow corridor - almost too narrow for Kruger to maneuver through with his full body armor on - were empty of paintings or colored paint or anything else that might have livened up the place and there were only two or three doors he passed along the way.
Reaching Delacourt's office at last, Kruger motioned his boys to remain out in the hall while he went in to retrieve their payment. The door shut and locked automatically behind him, which in and of itself was unusal, but the fact that the lights were dim and there was soft music playing from hidden speakers somewhere in the walls put him on edge.
"Miss Delacourt?" he called out, hand coming up to rest on the hilt of his katana out of instinctive habit.
She stepped out from behind a half-open door dressed in a slinky white negligee. She approached him slowly, eyes flashing with something he couldn't identify and face a complete emtionless mask.
"What's going on?" Kruger asked, hand falling away from his sword as his eyes fell blatantly to her breasts, visible through the thin silk covering them.
"I thought you might want to...relax...after your mission. I know you've wanted me for a long time, Agent Kruger." She slipped her thumbs beneath the straps of her gown and let it fall to the floor; Kruger's eyes followed it down. "After all this time, I'm finally going to give you what you've more than earned working for me."
It amazed Kruger at that moment that he was still standing there, barely batting an eye. It baffled him even more that he had all his fantasies literally laid bare before him right now and he was actually thinking about it. That he even had to think about it. The woman of his dreams standing naked before him, offering herself to him as she should have fokken done years ago, and he found himself struggling with an internal debate within himself with a heavy heart. A strong part of his body - which always did most of the thinking for him around women - was screaming at him to shove her down onto the small couch behind her and take what she was offering him. But another part - a part that had been dead for nearly two centuries - was telling him something completely different.
"Kruger?"
Delacourt's voice snapped him out of his mental anxiety.
"What are you waiting for?"